pioneers

Emily Inez Denny was born in Seattle in 1853. She was the first white child born in Seattle and the oldest child of pioneers David and Louisa Boren Denny.

Louisa, Madge, David, and Emily Denny ca. 1861

Inez and her sister Madge took classes at the Territorial University when it opened in 1860. Inez later recounted that each pupil had a small slate on which lessons were written, as paper was expensive and in short supply on the frontier. The girls cleaned their slates with a sponge attached to the slate by a string and water kept in a little bottle in their pockets. The boys, on the other hand, often didn’t bother with the sponge and water, but would spit on the slate or lick it off and dry it with a sleeve. …Continue reading “Emily Inez Denny — Seattle Pioneer”→

Known as the “Wedding Cake House”, the William Shoudy House once stood at the southeast corner of Queen Anne Avenue and Thomas Streets. Built for the Shoudy family ca. 1885, William Shoudy was soon to become mayor of Seattle in a close election the following year. Shoudy came west with Thomas Mercer, Aaron Mercer, Dexter Horton, and the Bagley’s in a wagon train over the Oregon Trail. Horton invited him to partner in a Seattle business which brought him north from Oregon. By 1945, the house had been torn down. Today an apartment building occupies the site.

After an exploration in December, 1852 of Smith’s Cove and on to Salmon Bay, David T. Denny decided on living in what is now lower Queen Anne, generally the area between today’s Denny Way and Mercer St. from Elliott Bay to Lake Union.

Married in January, 1853 in his brother Arthur’s cabin, David and new wife Louisa Boren filed a 320-acre donation claim the next day, where he built a one-room log cabin on the bluff overlooking Elliott Bay, near Denny Way and Western. Built of nearby trees without a single nail, Louisa planted Sweetbrier roses outside the front door. The roses were found still there growing wild in 1931, when they were uprooted for a new commercial building on the site.1…Continue reading “Early History of Queen Anne”→